How Alma’s Wright Park came to be

That $25,000 the Meijer store donated to the city of Alma is burning a hole in some people’s pockets.

Some believe all the money should go to one park.

Others think their own favorite park should get the money, the heck with the other parks.

Some are vague about what they want. Others want “their” park to be just as it was in the past.

Advertisement

Or a whole lot better than it ever was or is now.

And a few have some ideas for that $25,000 which might work, if you had another, oh, $100 or $200,000 or so to go with it.

At any rate, it was suggested that I take a look at Wright Park and it’s history.

So I called Dave McMacken. Who else?

Wright Park was part of the Alma Springs Sanitarium that was located between the Ammi Wright home and Wilcox. It was a huge building.

A Chicago landscaper designed the park in the 1880s, he said.

It had walkways, a circle drive, a goldfish pond, and the patients and guests could play tennis or croquet. They could ride bicycles or rent a horse and buggy.

“This was so they could “take the air,” McMacken said.

Because there was so much medical science didn’t know about the “healthful” properties of mineral water, the spas in Alma and St. Louis were successful. By the turn of the 20th century however, science had caught up. People learned that no miracles were happening when they drank or bathed in the waters so “taking the air” - and the water - was no longer fashionable.

In 1907, Ammi Wright gave the park to the city. In 1922, a stone monument was installed and dedicated to him.

And what about that stone wall in the back of the park? I asked.

That belonged to Sara Lancaster, Ammi Wright’s daughter, who lived adjacent to the park.

“She put that up to separate herself from the riff raff,” McMacken said. “She had broken glass (wedged) on the top to keep everybody out.”

And the bandstand that used to be there?

McMacken said he believed that was a replacement for a previous bandstand. He’s not sure how long they could have lasted in the outdoors.

I remember seeing pictures from the early part of the 20th century and the park was filled with trees. It was a very wooded area.

“And they had paths that wound around the trees,” he said. “But those trees were mostly elm and they were cut down in the 60s because of the elm disease.”

He was asked if he thought the park could use something - in the neighborhood of $25,000.

Like most others, he’d like to see better bathrooms, but unlike others, he said no, he couldn’t think of anything that was especially needed.